Cold Stew

COLD STEW

Of course, he didn’t know a thing.

How could he?

She’d been so careful with the arrangements, so meticulous with the preparation. The tables were covered with cloth so thick that any spills would be sucked dry before the table even knew it was wet. There wouldn’t be a trace of tonight left behind. There were people coming in the morning to ensure that! They’d bring their buckets and mops and cleanse the house of whatever memories there’d still be of the night before, then they, too, would be out the door and out of her life forever.

One hour to go.

He’d be home by nine.

Was she shaking?

How couldn’t she – why wouldn’t she – all things considered? She’d binged on caffeine and adrenaline since the alarm clocked squealed her awake at 5:30 a.m. and, now, nearly fifteen hours later, she hadn’t slowed the flow of either.

She sipped demurely at her steaming cup, ignoring the burn and savoring its smoky, roasted aroma. She let her face hang above it for a moment, wearing a mask of steam, then placed the mug in the center of the dining room table – on a coaster, of course.

The house was always in perfect order, more especially so tonight.

Plenty of knives.

An entire box of oversized trash bags – the ones like the contractors had used to haul off broken brick and loose pipe.

A hundred shadows where they could hide in the enormous house he’d built for them, long before he’d placed her on the back burner, like so much old stew, for that fat, brunette bitch he thought she hadn’t known about or the satin g-string that she pretended not to see in the glove compartment of their very comfortable C-230.

Well, stew she had, and the fucking stew was boiling over.

The oaken grandfather clock rang out the quarter hour.

8:45

Someone behind the couch coughed and Claudine nearly shit herself. It’d been stone silent for nearly 10 minutes and the sudden staccato had nearly scared her out of her artificially-tanned hide.

“Shut the fuck up,” she hissed! “He’ll be home any minute. Get ready.”

8:49

They crouched, a collective roar penned up in twenty throats.

She made a last minute inspection of the cabal. Two men behind the door, two behind the love-seat, three behind the table, and four behind the sectional couch that coiled around their living room like a white, denim snake. There were six men in the kitchen should he break his routine and come in that way and three behind the connecting door between the garage he never uses and the house. Slowly, she pulled the shades to the sills and cinched the drapes tightly.
Only Caesar had been more oblivious to his fate.

The house was a mass tomb, filled with nearly two dozen frenetic corpses ready to spring from the grave and launch their surprise.

Her face grew ashen.

She held up a trembling hand and commanded silence of the muttering crowd.

Footsteps.

He was walking quickly, always in a rush to nowhere in particular, or so, she was sure, he thought. She backed away from the door as if it had been a rabid bear. Her eyes narrowed into slits, her heart pounded, a kettle drum in her chest. She thrust her hand into the pocket of her jacket.

8:58

The footsteps halted just beyond the door. She awaited the signature jingle of his keys and the crack of the deadbolt pulling back.

Seconds stretched into days.

What the fuck is he waiting for? she screeched inside her skull. Come in, Tom, she willed him. Come in right now!

The deadbolt snapped back and she almost came with anticipation. She could barely watch as the door opened half a foot. His key-filled hand snaked along the wall for the light switch and, groping, soon found it. The brilliant incandescence of the overhead lights rushed down upon the cabal like lightning from Heaven itself.

Now, she thought, and gave the signal.

Into the house he stepped, his overcoat draped over his arm like a matador’s cape, briefcase gripped in that same hand, head down.

At once, the throng rushed upon him:

“Surprise, Tom! Surprise!”

He looked up, confused and horrified as thunderous pain ripped across his face like a comet through the night sky. His overcoat slipped to the redwood panels of the floor, covering his fallen briefcase. Sweat erupted from his forehead.

“Tom,” Alex, the first to reach Tom, began. He glanced behind him at the stunned gathering. Turning back, he asked, “Are you all right? Christ! Call an ambulance! Somebody call a fucking ambulance!”

Tom fell to one knee, his right hand clutched like a steel trap on his chest, right above his fibrillating heart.

“Where’s Claudine?” he called weakly.

He fell forward and rolled onto his back, saliva bubbling and rolling from his mouth like a fleshy volcano.

Screams filled the air and several men came to Claudine’s side.

“Don’t worry,” they assured her. “It’ll be fine,” they said. They hugged her roughly then rushed to side of Tom who had stopped breathing. Dominic was pounding Tom’s chest screaming at him to live.

Someone, John, perhaps, called from the kitchen to let everyone know the ambulance was en route.

Of course she had intercepted the phone call from Tom’s doctor warning of any sudden shocks following the first attack. It had come in two days before she’d planned the party and, of course, the follow up letter, detailing after care for cardiac patients, was safely in her pocket, clutched in a sweaty palm that was already drying.

Well, Claudine thought, letting slip a solitary tear, stew isn’t the only thing best served cold, Tom.


~ Mikepic